You can take a random sample of statements from myriad GOP legislators and come up with a cornucopia of absurdity from a huge cross-section of the party. Embark on the same exercise with Democrats and you get multiple examples from repeat offenders. The basic takeaway is that while the general level of 'crazy' one can find in each party is fairly equal and predictable, the amount of said crazy is distributed in a........ let's call it "less than equal fashion".

To wit: Republicans try to win over the young Latino vote on a platform that can be reduced to its essence as, "Elect me so I can deport your grandparents". When that is not successful at attracting support in the Latino community, the only clear and legitimate explanation for that is messaging.... has to be. The policy is sound - I mean, we're talking about Republicans.... they only have sound policies, right? They fall all over one and other to cast themselves as 'the grown ups in the room', the only responsible stewards of government So obviously they're just not clearly communicating the obviousness of their policy to everyone.

I would assert that the GOP, circa 2013, is communicating its policies and objectives with perfect clarity..... and that's undeniably their problem.

DelPen wrote:Am I the only one to see Michael Bloomberg = Dr. Raymond Cocteau?

If I find three seashells in my bathroom, you're doomed. And just because I admit to liking bad fast food doesn't mean I'd be cool with every restaurant being Taco Bell.

thats what i was saying last night. its not that the GOP has one bad egg and theyre virtuous for saying he's wrong. its that theyre only doing it for votes, in the most transparent and desperate way ive seen yet. the only thing theyve perceived that theyve done wrong is that they didnt win. yes we can say both sides do that and i totally agree, but damn, this is assuming a hell of a lot to think anyone is buying the republican change of heart on immigration. nobody is buying it. maybe if they'd stretched it out over a few years it could have been something, but to come right out the day after the election and basically say: "we totally lost the hispanic vote, so we need to MAKE THEM trust us somehow" is brass knuckles to the face of anyone with a brain.

the party jumping on this dude doesnt say **** about one stray animal, they see it as a sacrifice to make the whole look better by disowning this guy for an idiotic remark. i dont hold them accountable for what one guy said, i think the whole situation is boned because they see this as an opportunity to smash some old guard congressman in the name of reforming ideas theyve been championing with the highest flagpole they have. if anyone buys it, simply put, theyre **** stupid.

Kaizer wrote:thats what i was saying last night. its not that the GOP has one bad egg and theyre virtuous for saying he's wrong. its that theyre only doing it for votes, in the most transparent and desperate way ive seen yet. the only thing theyve perceived that theyve done wrong is that they didnt win. yes we can say both sides do that and i totally agree, but damn, this is assuming a hell of a lot to think anyone is buying the republican change of heart on immigration. nobody is buying it. maybe if they'd stretched it out over a few years it could have been something, but to come right out the day after the election and basically say: "we totally lost the hispanic vote, so we need to MAKE THEM trust us somehow" is brass knuckles to the face of anyone with a brain.

the party jumping on this dude doesnt say **** about one stray animal, they see it as a sacrifice to make the whole look better by disowning this guy for an idiotic remark. i dont hold them accountable for what one guy said, i think the whole situation is boned because they see this as an opportunity to smash some old guard congressman in the name of reforming ideas theyve been championing with the highest flagpole they have. if anyone buys it, simply put, theyre **** stupid.

now that i read this sober, i can barely understand what i was thinking. good god.

Kaizer wrote:thats what i was saying last night. its not that the GOP has one bad egg and theyre virtuous for saying he's wrong. its that theyre only doing it for votes, in the most transparent and desperate way ive seen yet. the only thing theyve perceived that theyve done wrong is that they didnt win. yes we can say both sides do that and i totally agree, but damn, this is assuming a hell of a lot to think anyone is buying the republican change of heart on immigration. nobody is buying it. maybe if they'd stretched it out over a few years it could have been something, but to come right out the day after the election and basically say: "we totally lost the hispanic vote, so we need to MAKE THEM trust us somehow" is brass knuckles to the face of anyone with a brain.

the party jumping on this dude doesnt say **** about one stray animal, they see it as a sacrifice to make the whole look better by disowning this guy for an idiotic remark. i dont hold them accountable for what one guy said, i think the whole situation is boned because they see this as an opportunity to smash some old guard congressman in the name of reforming ideas theyve been championing with the highest flagpole they have. if anyone buys it, simply put, theyre **** stupid.

now that i read this sober, i can barely understand what i was thinking. good god.

I like Dr. Ben Carson, he's a great role model and I agree with at least what I am hearing right now on his political views. But think before you make a statement that lumps gay marriage in with NAMBLA and bestiality.

I understand what he's trying to say but this is not they way to make your point. And besides, when single parent households, no stigma to kids out of wedlock and easy divorces became common place in society, marriage as we know it was dead. And I think 99% of Americans will agree NAMBLA is vile and I would think somewhere close to that would think the same about bestiality.

Hockeynut! wrote:It really makes me depressed when anyone equates gay marriage with pedophilia or beastiality. How can something between two consenting adults be compared to an act involving a child or an animal?

And for the "God defined marriage as one man and one woman" crowd, what about Abraham, David, Moses, Solomon, etc?

From my reading I can't find a hardcore definition of marriage in the Bible. That being said, God never told anyone to take more than one wife. This is just another example of people talking with their foot in their mouth.

DelPen wrote:But think before you make a statement that lumps gay marriage in with NAMBLA and bestiality.

I think that's just a typical manifestation of what many still believe about homosexuality; that it's aberrant behavior, nothing more. You see, behavior can be modified. It's a choice.

It's 'sexual orientation', not 'sexual preference'.

PensFanInDC wrote:From my reading I can't find a hardcore definition of marriage in the Bible. That being said, God never told anyone to take more than one wife.

It's not stated in the bible that Big G expressly told anyone to take more than one wife, as in "Lo, for ye shall go forth and bag many brides". However, there are myriad examples of polygyny amongst the cast of biblical characters as Hockeynut references. Abraham had three wives, Moses had two wives. Shoot, David had nearly twenty wives..... and don't even get me started on Solomon.

There is also at least one reference to plural marriage in the Deuteronomic code.

So North Korea is rattling their sabres and making threats. So a response to that is to appoint as the new ambassador to Japan, someone who would have to deal with this threat if it ever becomes reality, Caroline Kennedy.

A few years back, my employer rolled out a corporate mandated training of Inclusion: A Manager's Guide. In the classroom with 15 - 16 other managers, one of the new managers became very vocal when the topic of why at a corporate level we spend money to dedicate a month of awareness to an ethnicity or lifestyle other than our own. The trainer tried to explain that to attract top talent, you have to be willing to include people into the group that may be different than the group. One of the more tenured managers made a comment that, as a Catholic, he will not spend any time of his day to talk to employees about the gay and lesbian lifestyle based on his beliefs. Mr. Newbie, without waiting for the trainer to respond, says, "Yeah, first you want us to talk about the gays; are we now expected to celebrate Pedophile Month?!?".

A woman at my table takes great offense to this exchange, gets up and storms out of the room. We are then given a 15 minute break so that the room has a chance to gather our thoughts and come back calm. I am standing in the hallway on my phone getting messages and overhear the angry woman on her phone filing a sexual harassment complaint with our HR Hotline team because others are comparing being a lesbian to being a child molester and the trainer won't stop them. We all go back to the meeting room except for the angry woman who has since left. An hour later, the trainer is called out of the meeting and when she returns is visibly angry. She says the training session is now canceled and we are free to leave.

A couple weeks later, news filters in that Mr. Newbie was fired, the tenured manager given a warning, the trainer re-assigned to training new IT technology and the angry woman was out on a stress claim.

I just kinda naturally assumed that my employer hired me to work with my co-workers? So much drama over an assumption.

PensFanInDC wrote:From my reading I can't find a hardcore definition of marriage in the Bible. That being said, God never told anyone to take more than one wife.

It's not stated in the bible that Big G expressly told anyone to take more than one wife, as in "Lo, for ye shall go forth and bag many brides". However, there are myriad examples of polygyny amongst the cast of biblical characters as Hockeynut references. Abraham had three wives, Moses had two wives. Shoot, David had nearly twenty wives..... and don't even get me started on Solomon.

There is also at least one reference to plural marriage in the Deuteronomic code.

Okay. The world is and was filled with people who believe in Him but don't listen to Him all the time. It doesn't mean that God condones every one of His follower's actions.

Mr. Newbie was not at all versed in corporate handling of sensitive topics. Show up, participate with only cotton ball answers or observations, and get out alive.

(I was wise enough to turn my cardboard name plate over when the tension ramped up so that those that didn't know who I was, wouldn't. Had no desire to be named as a witness to this career-ending train wreck.)

PensFanInDC wrote:Okay. The world is and was filled with people who believe in Him but don't listen to Him all the time. It doesn't mean that God condones every one of His follower's actions.

Okay, I'm confused. The bible is the word of Big G as revealed to his prophets, right? And part of that revelation is a rule that if you have two wives, and you really don't like one of them, but she gave you your first born male child, you can't arbitrarily say that the first born from the cool wife is your actual first born when setting up the inheritance.

There may be no express definition of marriage in the bible, but there are lots of examples that illustrate that plural marriage was fairly common back in the day. Which means that the definition of marriage.................... wait for it............... can change!

tifosi77 wrote:There may be no express definition of marriage in the bible, but there are lots of examples that illustrate that plural marriage was fairly common back in the day. Which means that the definition of marriage.................... wait for it............... can change!

If you are a practitioner of Islam, plural marriage is still perfectly acceptable today. There are plenty of examples of plural marriage all over the world, even in places that do not follow the Abrahamic religions. Most of them are polygamous, but there are rarer examples of cultures that feature polyandrous marriages. I am not aware of any culture that featured polygamous or polyandrous marriages, however, where it was considered acceptable or typical for the same-sex spouses to be having sex with each other.

Looking at the same Wikipedia page, I note that the reference to the Zhou Dynasty is for only a single couple, and that comes from a story in a book that was written darn near a thousand years later. It could very well be apocryphal. It also doesn’t say that the two men involved were recognized as being legally married. The reference to Rome mentions that several emperors (including Nero) married men, but it also says that same-sex marriages had no legal standing in Roman law. Plus, using Nero as an example of what was acceptable moral behavior would be like going to the Adult Video News Awards (i.e., the Oscars for the porn industry) and pointing to the attendees as exemplars of American society.